"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yesterday almost gave me a plexus," I said bitterly. "Why did you frame up one of those when-we-were-twenty-one dispatches from the front? It sounded like a love song from Willie Hayface of Cohoes, after his first day on Broadway. Didn't you know that my wife was liable to open that queer fellow and put me on ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... they wanted, they thought they would take a walk and see this queer world they had come to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... there is that transparent ethereal look in her face which makes old women say 'she is not long for this world,' that fateful beauty which creates an atmosphere of doom about it. You cannot look at her without a queer involuntary feeling that she was born to die in some tragic way. She reminds one of those perilously fragile vases we feel must get broken, those rarely delicate flowers we feel ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... get out before we starve, we must get out before we starve," sang the regular blows of the bar to a queer little tune which Malipieri had ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... you're all right now, Towsley and I'll just take another try at it and see if we can't keep our eyes right front next time. Good-by. I hope you'll not feel shook up, afterward, as mother did the day she fell down-stairs. Didn't appear to hurt her a mite, then, but she was all trembling and queer-headed for a week afterward. Come on, Tows! I didn't have but fifteen minutes for play, to begin with, and a lot of that's ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... things and going to as many sheep camps as she could, taking with her the good things to the poor exiles, the sheep-herders. I liked the plan and was glad to agree, but I never dreamed I should have so lovely a time. When the queer old wooden clock announced two we went ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... had found strange things in the arroyo—rose-quartz arrow heads, notched like saws; an old, rusted Colt's revolver, bearing the date 1858, and a picture of the holding up of a stagecoach engraved around the chamber; queer, tiny shells of some long gone fresh-water snail; bits of yellow pottery, their edges worn smooth and round by the water; to say nothing of birds' nests, villages of ugly water-white scorpions; and lizards, from the tiny ones that change their color, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... thought of finding something around your works for him. They say he's an all-fired worker and he certainly does seem to have hid some decent stuff in him under all his damfoolishness. And you used to be such a tremendous friend of the family—I thought perhaps you—of course I know he's a queer lot—I know—" ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... turning away in desperation he felt a tug at his elbow. Looking around, he saw a queer figure with a countenance that resembled a first attempt at a charcoal sketch from life: one cheek was larger than the other, the mouth was sadly out of drawing, the eyes shone out from among the bruises like the sun from behind the clouds. But if the features were disfigured, ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... of time there wandered that way a queer character, a clock-maker, who being fully instructed in the inner workings of time-tellers, and not having inherited the traditions of that village, did not regard this clock with the veneration accorded to it by the natives. To their astonishment he ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... nice, at any rate," replied Cologne, as they turned into a lane, a short cut over the woodland. "But, say, Dorothy, do you know I believe that fellow—the one who rode the farmer's horse—is out this way? I saw some one who had that same queer gait, and who wore his hat on the side of his head, and I am almost sure it was he. I was not near enough to see his face, but there is something so characteristic about his swing, I am sure I could not be mistaken. Did Tavia tell you anything about ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... last summer, at the great Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, I overheard a conversation that interested me very much. The subject of it was a queer little animal called a "gopher," which sat stuck up in a case with its comical little head perched up in the air; for it wasn't even alive, but was a ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... upon him that there was no further need to escape the Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid stuff, this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast awaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose. The ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... finished it. With a queer, guttural cry Monody took a step forward with his left foot an' kicked him under the chin, lifted him clear from the ground, an' rolled him over, a crumpled an' broken thing, on top o' the sub-cook The man with the lantern began to fan-shoot into Monody, an' I jumped for him an' hit him in the ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... But like want of reasonableness, a love for having the last word, want of humour and the like, politics were in her opinion a mannish attribute to be tolerated, and Gladstone was the name of the something which makes all our sex such queer characters. She had a profound faith in him as an aid to conversation, and if there were silent men in the company would give him to them to talk about, precisely as she divided a cake among children. And then, with a motherly ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... is possible, from similarity in the ways of appearing and disappearing, that he is the monster Tauguitch of the Sabobas and Cahuillas described in The Legend of Tauguitch and Algoot.[3] This god was a queer compound of goodness and evil, who taught them all the rites and ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Nick's queer little companion peered through the misty, uncertain light of the cobbler's workshop with his sharp restless red eyes, but ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... lodging in a queer house, since pulled down, facing the Maximilian Avenue, and entered into a fairly lively intercourse with our operatic stars who had just returned. My old enthusiasm for Schroder-Devrient revived when I saw her again more frequently in opera. Strange ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... tree they spied so yellow, Rustling in motion queer; In they fired, and down they dropped— Butternuts, my dear! Nutting, nutting— Who'll ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... "The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm; Or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays." In that book was told how the acquaintance was made of Sandy Apgar, who ran a farm in New Jersey. As Mr. Pertell was looking for some country scenes to use in connection with his moving picture dramas, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... "father said if I could raise the calf I might have it. Didn't I have a time with it, though, it was so near dead! Of course I will fix my old dress up for you—that is, if I get the money. Sometimes I think father's queer; he did not give Elizabeth the money when he sold that colt he had given her." And ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck,—nigger luck—he don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... no time. "It's fine of you," she said eagerly. "Yes, I'm sure you can do it. Not one person in fifty will know whether the tunes you play are national or not. Something quaint and queer for the Hungarian, and jigsy and gay for the Irish. Castanets in the Spanish ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... I have lost no time. I am rather fagged, but I am sure to be well paid for my hardship; I never want sleep so long as I can have the music of a dice-box, and wherewithal to pay the piper. As I told you, he tried some of his queer turns, but I foiled him like a man, and, in return, gave him more than he could relish of the genuine dead knowledge. In short, I have plucked the old baronet as never baronet was plucked before; I have scarce left him the stump of a quill. I have got promissory notes in his hand ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... closely at Manuel, and seeing that Manuel, on his side, was observing him calmly, averted his gaze. Bizco's face possessed the interest of a queer animal or of a pathological specimen. His narrow forehead, his flat nose, his thick lips, his freckled skin and his red, wiry hair lent him the appearance ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... sea, varying from one mile to five miles in width. This forms the harbor of Hongkong, one of the most spacious and picturesque in the world. It is crowded with steamers, ferryboats, Chinese junks with queer-shaped sails of yellow matting, sampans, trim steam launches and various other craft. As the vessel passes beyond the smelting works and the dry docks it rounds a point and the beauty of ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... hands a model of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have occurred to the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... a queer fellow. Although he is a scamp and dearly loves to make trouble for his neighbors, he is always ready to take their part when others make trouble for them. Many are the times he has given them warning of danger. This ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... said in a shrill voice that he thought Jack was a very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking because his waist was so narrow and his back so humped. And when he took off his tan Panama hat, a white fuzz exploded from his scalp. His face was pale as the moon in daylight. His broad smile showed teeth that Jack ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... made. Why the first evening dress Helen had and the first long pants Bud (Wade) had I bought. Well, we were going down to Fort Smith, but Bud got sick and we couldn't go. You know, Mary, it seemed so queer. When Helen and I went to California, we all saw the same circus together. Yes, I've been to California with her twice. Whenever the train would stop she would come from the pullman to the coach where the colored persons had to ride to see about me. We went out to visit Sister (Bess Hudgins ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper. Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss Agatha. And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Zoology, because—well, I really have never been able to learn exactly why he is to be expected to know zoology. There is, indeed, a popular superstition, that doctors know all about things that are queer or nasty to the general mind, and may, therefore, be reasonably expected to know the "barbarous binomials" applicable to snakes, snails, and slugs; an amount of information with which the general mind is usually completely satisfied. And there is a scientific superstition that Physiology ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... enshrined in Jacobite memories as the battle of Gladsmuir, for a reason very characteristic of the Stuarts and their followers. Some {216} queer old book of prophecies had foretold, more than a century earlier, that there should be a battle at Gladsmuir. The battle of Prestonpans was not fought really on Gladsmuir at all: Gladsmuir lies a good mile away from the scene of Charles's easy triumph and Cope's inglorious rout; but ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... good lady? Not enough to pay my passage to Pen-zephyr. I came over on your account, for I thought there was a mystery somewhere. Now I must go back on my own. Mind this—'twould be very awkward for you if your old man were to know. He's a queer temper, though he ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... shook as I hung up the receiver. A brick house, she had said; the Wells house was brick. And so were all the other houses on the street. Vines in the back? Well, even my own house had vines. It was absurd; it was pure coincidence; it was—well, I felt it was queer. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... family know he's not working on the sly; then he says in effect: 'I think of thee, my little Tessie, when the moonlight is shining on the world; your bright eyes have me going for fair, kid, and due to a queer pain in my interior, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... after, to conceal so execrable an assassination, threw her body into a pit, which afterwards contracted the traditional appellation of Nun-pit." [Footnote: Philipotts, "Villare Cantianum," quoted by Littlehales, op. cit. p. 27.] Now whether this tale be true or an invention to explain the queer name "Nun-pit" we shall never know, but as it happens we do know that the nuns were removed to the Isle of Sheppey and that St Thomas persuaded King Henry II. to establish at Newington a small house of seven secular canons to whom was given the whole manor. But curiously ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... with a queer exaltation. Something strange, mystical, dynamic had happened. It was as if scales had fallen from their eyes and they saw with a new vision. They stood together humbly, divested of all their greatness, touching one another in the instinctive fashion of children, as if seeking mutual protection, ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... weather, warm and bright, and it seemed to penetrate your body through your eyes when you looked, and through your mouth when you breathed. Rose and Simon hugged and kissed each other every minute, and that gave me a queer feeling! Monsieur Beaurain and I walked behind them, without speaking much, for when people do not know each other, they do not find anything to talk about. He looked timid, and I liked to see his embarrassment. At last we got to the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 87, lives in a shack furnished by the city. With him lives his second wife, a much older woman. Both he and his wife have a reputation for being "queer" and do not welcome outside visitors. However, he readily gave an interview and seemed most willing to relate the story ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... there was but lazy life, an occasional omnibus, the queer old diligence of Provence with its great covered hood in the midst of which sat the driver amid a cluster of peasants, hidden like the queen bee by the swarm, a bullock cart bringing hay into the city, a tradesman's cart, a lumbering wine waggon, with its three great white horses and great barrels. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... is left of a bit of work which my nephew shaped out and nearly finished and I put the last hand to," said Le Balafre, "a good fellow that I dispatched yonder and who prayed me to throw his head into the Maes.—Men have queer fancies when old Small Back [a cant expression in Scotland for Death, usually delineated as a skeleton. S.] is gripping them, but Small Back must lead down the dance with us ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... "It is a queer world we live in, child," she continued, "and true love and suitability of character are such a rare combination, but from what I can judge, you and ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... pretty fair boxer at the university, but, after I had called time for the first round, the thing was to all intents and purposes a genuine fight, and he was all in several times over. The "Boiler-plate's" fists made a noise like a woodchopper. Natica stood watching it with a queer, queer smile. But I saw—and I saw it with a sinking at the heart, for I realized that I'd cherished the guilty hope that things were not really going to be straightened out—that with every mark of the "Boiler-plate's" glove, her husband was coming ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His pleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to half- mad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and conscience- stricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles into his care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging, more than one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and sun them as it were in the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... eyes, and she couldn't help listening. Bridget was making a most ostentatious noise with her broom, but through it all, Katy seemed to hear other sounds—feet on the stairs, doors opening and shutting—once, a stifled giggle. How queer it ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... the horses into the corral. One did not know much of the Americans then—for why? They were always going, going—never stopping, hurrying on to the gold mines, hurrying away from the gold mines, hurrying to look for other gold mines: but always going on foot, on horseback, in queer wagons—hurrying, pushing everywhere. Ah, it took away the breath. All, except one American—he did not hurry, he did not go with the others, he came and stayed here at Buenaventura. He was very quiet, very civil, very sad, and very discreet. He was not like the others, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... was concentrated upon the French inventor. The latter's health appeared to have suffered in no way from his eighteen months' confinement; but his queer attitude, his incoherent gestures, his haggard eye, and his indifference to what was passing around him testified only too plainly to the degeneration of his ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... or evening walk. It broke from him to several boats that passed by us upon the water; but to the Knight's great surprise, as he gave the good-night to two or three young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us, what queer old put we had in the boat? with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first, but at length assuming a face of magistracy, told us, That if he were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that her Majesty's subjects were no more to ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Spriggins in his usual gentlemanly and unassuming manner—a fact which is not lost upon the applicant. "Well, Mr. Agent, spose you'll think it a mighty queer business to see a feller comin' here without a bein' asked, so to make a long story short, I might as well till you all ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... add, is a queer character. The more I saw of him, the greater became my admiration for King Leopold. In his present state the only rule must be a strong rule. No one would ever think of thanking a native for a service. It would be misunderstood because the black man out there mistakes kindness for weakness. You ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... would love to go. The day will not seem all lost if we spend a short time of it properly. But do tell us, Mrs. Gardner, what makes those people take the 'jerks'? It seems such a queer ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... yourself away from your shells even for an hour?" said Emilia. "What a queer child you are! What can you find to play at with them; they are all arranged in perfect ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... taciturn and irresponsive. Betty's wonderful gray eyes looked out of the window at the passing landscape, which Sir John was quite sure she did not see; Sylvia and Hester were absorbed in watching their sister. Sir John had a queer kind of feeling that there was something wrong with the girls' dress; that very coarse black serge, made with no attempt at style; the coarse, home-made stockings; the rough, hobnailed boots; the small tam-o'-shanter caps, pushed far back from ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... "Oh, delightful, and so queer; I've known her these twenty years. A great pet of mine is dear Miss Thorne. She is so very strange, you know. She always makes me think of the Eskimos and the Indians. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to play for it." He stopped to chuckle, but still a little regretfully. "My playing certainly made a hit. Sunday morning a preacher lambasted the dance, and called me the special messenger of the devil. My job was with a pillar of his church. I didn't go to work Monday morning. It's a queer world; that preacher was the father of Noah Ezekiel Foster, who is now ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... now. Cold? He believed you this fog was cold, and you might believe him that fog was cold, but the cold of both together would not be a patch upon what it was when your bones chattered in your skin and you heard the ship's keel grinding, and said "Ice!" "He'd seen some queer faces—dead and living—in his time, but when that fog lifted and the sun shone upon walls of green ice on both sides above our head, and the captain's face as cold and as green as them with knowing ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... over the station. Only the Eel moved. With that queer sliding step of his that was almost noiseless, he went to the door of the little house ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... with a range and season of blossom similar to the preceding species, and with even smaller white, fragrant flowers, growing on one side of a twisted spike, chooses dry fields, hillsides, open woods, and sandy places - queer habitats for a member of its moisture-loving tribe. Its leaves have usually fallen by flowering time. The cluster of tuberous, spindle-shaped roots are an ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... "That's queer doctrine! Mind you, I don't say it mayn't be all right. But it does seem a cowardly thing to go asking him to save you, after you've been all your life doing what ought to damn you—if there be a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... directly,' sounded the organist's voice, with a curious jogging effect in it, such as Millet was used to sometimes in his conversations with his wife at the children's bed-time. And then Millet heard him go up-stairs, and it was some minutes before he came down again, and then in such a queer absent condition that if it had been any other man in the parish than Mr Robins, whose sobriety was unimpeachable, Millet would have said that he had had a ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... I've often wondered what it could be. He certainly's a queer stick. Got to admit that. Always brooding. Good fellow all right, and, for a 'sphinx' as you call him, likable. But I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... they're bright and shining Like the summer moons, Two queer faces look at you From the silver spoons. One is very long, and one Broad as it can be, And both of them are grewsome things, As ever you ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "Queer idea of Joe's to enlist in the first place," continued Moore. "He made a much better miner. You're following his case in court, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... the queer figures some of the gentlemen and ladies presented on the poop, when all at once the breakfast gong sounded, and they all scuttled down much faster than they had come up, the sea air having given those able to get out of their bunks fresh appetites after they had paid ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... say "if they are at all like you," but that seemed a little too personal to say to one's doctor, even a doctor who had saved your life and had the most wonderful smile that ever was, and the nicest eyes. "If they will let me," she substituted. "But it is such a queer, kind thing to do. The other doctors were interested in me, too, as a case. But it didn't occur to any of them to offer me the hospitality of their homes and family for an unlimited time. Are ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... tones of a fatalist.... "Yet she knows I am not in my senses when I do that!" he exclaimed. "Well, I must walk about till I find her....Seize her, why didn't she know better than bring me into this disgrace!" he roared out. "She wasn't queer if I was. 'Tis like Susan to show such idiotic simplicity. Meek—that meekness has done me more harm ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... been cut by the ticket-taker. Then, there before him was the glaring sign of the Nickelorion tempting him; a bill with "Great Train Robbery Film Tonight" made his heart thump like stair-climbing—and he dashed at the ticket-booth with a nickel doughtily extended. He felt queer about the scalp as the cashier girl slid out a coupon. Why did she seem to be watching him so closely? As he dropped the ticket in the chopper he tried to glance away from the Brass-button Man. For one- nineteenth of a second he kept his head turned. It turned ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... of perfect art. The story of an outlaw fills him with enthusiasm, and the heroic struggles of godlike souls are for him meaningless. He gazes with envious awe upon some vulgar rich man, and finds a philosopher, or a saint, only queer. He studies because he has been sent to school, where ignorance will expose him to ridicule and humiliation, and possibly too, because he is told that knowledge will help him to win money and influence. However great his proficiency, he is in truth but a barbarian, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... sweet of you to answer so," said Lottie. "I want to see the queer, awkward country people who go to such places. They amuse me vastly; don't they ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... pie." She clothed him, taught him, and had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed him to her hearth on his return from every cruise, and when she died bequeathed him her possessions. "She was a good old girl," he would say. "I tell you, Mr. Dodd, it was a queer thing to see me and the old lady talking a pasear in the garden, and the old man scowling at us over the pickets. She lived right next door to the old man, and I guess that's just what took me there. I wanted ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... me, too," she mused. "Or if I'm merely something to dance with? Never mind, it doesn't matter. I do need a little gaiety. I hope the doctor won't object—but why should he? I'm not going to neglect my job. Still, he might; he's queer. That's the worst of having the doctor living in the house. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... make out what he is, for he never says much," said another. "He seems to be thinking about something all the time, and yet he attends to his work. He is a queer genius, I guess." ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... I languish in vain, And I pine for a "love"—and a "dear." Oh! why did I vow to be plain— In my speech? It sounds awfully queer! Stop! "Awfully" is not allowed. Though it will slip out sometimes, I own. Oh, I might as well sit in my shroud, As use ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... result of his own doings kept his bitterness always at white heat. The expression of his thin, haggard face was sardonic, and the groups of simple children, accustomed to ask any stranger for stamps for their collections—a queer habit of the place—turned away from him when once they had ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... oneself out through the world is a queer sort of business: one can not Keep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in the cloister. When we are handling honey we now and then lick at our fingers. Lampe sorely provoked me; he frisked ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... for here there seem to be those peculiar combinations of varied objects, and depths, from the shallowest to the deepest, with the variations of colored sands and rocks on the bottom, as well as queer-shaped and colored bowlders lying on the vari-colored sands, that are not found elsewhere. The waving of the water gives a mottled effect surpassing the most delicate and richly-shaded marbles and onyxes. Watered-silks of the most perfect manufacture are but childish ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... long over wine, They who go about tasting mixed wine. Look not upon the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup. At last it bites like a serpent, And stings like an adder. Your eyes shall see strange things, And your mind shall suggest queer things. You shall be like one sleeping at sea, Like one asleep in a great storm. "They have struck me, but I feel no pain; They have beaten me, but I feel it not; I will seek it yet again. When shall I awake from ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... looked for), and Tom goes on living in that cottage all by his self, and never so much as casts an eye towards her— and that fond of her as he'd used to be, afore, too! Tony, man, don't you think it's a bit queer?" ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... The queer old tub of a ferry boat, with its triangular wings spreading at the sides,—used as guards and "gang planks",—is a curiosity, as it zigzags across the powerful current to the village on the ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... notoriety in the sheeplands to a lucky blow, would fail, leaving him far ahead on the deal. He tightened his girths and set his foot in the stirrup, ready to mount and ride home; paused so, hand on the saddle-horn, with a queer, half-puzzled, half-suspicious look in his ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... the conclusion yesterday," said the doctor, entering abruptly on his business, "that our patient was strong enough to justify us at last in running all risks, and communicating with her friends; and I have accordingly followed the clew which that queer fellow, Captain Wragge, put into our hands. You remember he advised us to apply to Mr. Pendril, the lawyer? I saw Mr. Pendril two days ago, and was referred by him—not overwillingly, as I thought—to a lady named Miss Garth. I heard enough from her to satisfy me that ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... it was natural, when invalids drank from three to five bottles of the nourishing kumys a day, that they should not require much extra food, and that the management provided what variety was healthy and advisable, no doubt; only we would have liked a choice; and—what queer steak! ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the reader into a secret—had, upon the first appearance of the Spanish ship, been greatly exercised in his mind lest he should fail in courage when the two ships came to blows; but with the discharge of the first shot the queer agitated feeling which he had mistaken for fear completely passed away, and was instantly forgotten; and now, his services being no longer required at the helm, he armed himself with a handspike snatched from the deck, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Miss finds out 'bout my cookin' and takes me to de big house to cook for dem. De dishes and things was awful queer to me, to what I been brung up to use in France. I mostly cooks after dat, but I's de powerful big woman when I's young and when dey gits in a tight [Handwritten ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody before had dreamed was in him; when he was lazy, he only had to turn his head and look at me, and I knew what that meant and conformed unto him. He had a queer fancy at times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my foot so as to hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye. For he laughed at me, and I knew it. There is really such a thing as a horse- laugh. One day we passed through a drove of sheep, and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... she, "and I have been on board of her and have gone all over her, and have seen many things which are queer and strange to me. But the strangest thing about her, to my mind, being a landswoman, is, that she should belong to my father. There are many things which he has not, which it would be easy to believe he would like to have, but that a ship, ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and also independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; their researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion; and what is left over is not very much. To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, greyheaded, self-important, little discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a reception of his fellow-men, or ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... that man Hatton; remember him perfectly well; a matter of twenty or it may be nineteen years since he bolted. Queer fellow; lived upon nothing; only drank water; no temperance and teetotal then, so no excuse. Beg pardon, Mr Morley; no offence I hope; can't bear whims; but respectable societies, if they don't drink, they make speeches, hire your rooms, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... town, and the knight, though he has a pretty good opinion of the song he could make if he should try, is quite a stranger here. And now, as if for the very purpose of helping the knight, comes another young man, who turns out to be a prentice, and he begins arranging benches and chairs in some queer sort of way, while the looks that he casts at the maid and the looks she throws back at him show that they are not total strangers; and he tells them that these very poets and singers are to meet here in a few minutes, and that ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... is a queer mix-up," said the man, later on. "I'll see if I can learn anything about them when I am away. Somebody ought to be able to place them,—although, to be sure, a great number of children have become hopelessly lost during the ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... glad to meet Benny Turton, the 'human fish,' again," said Joe to himself. "His act is sure a queer one. I wonder if I could stay under water as long as he does. I'm going to try it some day if I get a chance at his tank. And Helen—I'll be glad ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... was; I am sure of it; I can read Dietrich's writing fast enough," answered Blasi, and he added to himself, "The women-folk are queer creatures. No fellow can understand them. A moment ago she looked all broken-down, and as if she could be blown out with a puff of wind, and now she looks bright and strong as the ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... reserves ambushed behind the Ministry of Marine filling their magazines, and being confronted by a fresh emeute above, Jean Marot began to feel queer for the first time of a day ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... objections Protestants may make to Roman Catholic services, they admit that everything is done decently and in order. The laxity, however, in the Italian churches is, or was until recently, beyond belief, and every traveller brought home some queer tale. Mrs. Burton, who prided herself on being "an old English Catholic," was frequently distressed by these irregularities, and she never hesitated to reprove the offending priests. One day a priest who had called at Burton's house was requested to conduct a brief service in Mrs. Burton's private ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... that," replied Mrs. Dods, who was peculiarly ingenious in the mode of framing and stating what she conceived to be her grievances; "but is it no a queer thing for a decent man like yoursell, Maister Tirl, to be leaving your lodgings without a word spoken, and me put to a' these charges in seeking for your dead body, and very near taking my business out of honest Maister Bindloose's hands, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... a queer stock, Little Rathie, michty queer," said Tammas Haggart, Bowie's brother, who was a queer stock himself, but was not aware of it; "but, ou, I'm thinkin' the wife had something to do wi't. She was ill to manage, an' Little Rathie hadna the ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... mentioned that you had a temper and were proud as Lucifer. 'He's such a hothead. How'll he take it?' asks Beauclerc. 'Why, quarterly, to be sure!' cries Selwyn. And that reminds me: George has written an epigram that is going the rounds. Out of some queer whim—to keep them warm I suppose—Madame Bellevue took her slippers to bed with her. Some one told it at the club, so Selwyn sat down and ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it - and the chalk-quarry on one side and the gravel-pit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... few Russians flung themselves about to the lilt of some of their rowdiest cake-walks, while the "Marseillaise," seeming a universal favourite, was repeatedly called for. On the morning of the fourth day three weird-looking figures, wearing a queer mixture of ready-made Dutch garments, entered the camp with a guard. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I recognised some of my former companions at Stroehen. Two of them, Captain Harrison, of the Royal Irish, and Lieutenant C. F. Templar, 1st Gloucesters (since then, I regret to say, killed ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... made their swift way along the south shore of the great lake, did they talk of Paymaster Bullen and wonder what had become of him. Donald was inclined to believe that he had either returned to New York, or still remained where they had left him; but Christie only smiled, and said Bullen was such a queer fish that there was no predicting what he ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Spaff. "If he is, and he's dirty, he could queer us in all these towns; he's been through here with two or three Jim Crow minstrel shows; these rubes imagine he's some pumpkins. Why, I have to go out of the house every time he comes on. He's the rankest ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Here was an adventure indeed, and when you were once well in for an adventure all sorts of queer things happened. ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... fellows. There's something queer about this. A mysterious radio station, hidden away, that sends a continuous wave on a hitherto unused wave length. This has been going on for a week. What does it mean? Then there is this man, this Peg Leg, whom Bob discovers arriving from ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... me much? Well, I fancy not; (Though a few did come to greet me;) The general verdict's "A very queer lot!" Nor is SOL in a hurry to meet me. He does not spy me afar off. No! He would rather I kept my distance; And if to the front I again should go, 'Twon't be with his assistance. He deems me a troublesome ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... was thinking, reading, speaking of God, of truth, of wealth, of poverty, everybody considered it out of place and somewhat queer, while his mother and aunt, with good-natured irony, called him notre cher philosophe. When, however, he was reading novels, relating indecent anecdotes or seeing droll vaudevilles in the French theatre, and afterward merrily repeated them, everybody praised and encouraged ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... me of a story somewhat as strange: During the battle of Delhi there was a quarter-master in the regiment, a queer fellow, who was never at a loss; (he is now in the corps, and can vouch for my statement) he was charging at the head of his squadron, when he caught a cannon shot in his hands: instantly dismounting, he chucked the ball into a field-piece, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... coldly, did you? It was a queer sort of coldness, when I would have given my ears to say Yes, and was obliged to say No. Matters, however, are now a little changed. Anne is come home, and her presence certainly makes me feel more at liberty. Then, if all be well, I will come and see you. Tell me only ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Scots: I thought she was prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot everything but the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won't do to cry: they would be red. I don't quite like some of the words they use, though—they make one feel queer. Now, why couldn't they say "illegitimate child"? It means just the same; besides, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... line and color, has created the eerie impression which we attach to the girl herself. The best portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... town. Got in line today just for a moment to tell the President it would suit me. He said, "Oh, yes," and to file my papers in the Treasury Department, and he hoped his friends in Minnesota would be patient till he could get around to them. Queer he should think I was ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... occupied by a person of whom very little is known, who goes out chiefly at night and is hardly ever seen during the day. Tradesmen, and the crossing-sweeper at the corner, have caught a glimpse on rare occasions of a white face at the window, the startled face of a queer creature, who blinks and wrings at his nails with his teeth; who peers at you, jerks and grins; who seems uncertain what to do; who sometimes shoots out his hands as if he would drive them through the glass: altogether a ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... a queer-looking tail. It was broad and thick and flat, oval in shape, and covered with scales instead of hair. Just then Jumper the Hare made a discovery. "Why!" he exclaimed, "Paddy has ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... He's not mad, far from it. He's just a bit queer—he's got 'bats in the belfry', as men say. He gets these attacks when he's at home in the dark winter days and has nothing to occupy him. But there's little sign of it in the summer. And ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the tenants did not stop here, and if I thought there was anything queer about the place; and he asked how you liked it, and how long you were going to stay; and if you had ever seen aught ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... sanguinary sort who always insist upon seeing the grist the gods send to their slow-grinding mills, he will prefer to know the sequel. As I have already told you, it was in September they were married. On the morning they left Kentuck the weather was extremely hot, with queer little clouds hanging about the mountains. They took the road up the canon, toward McGibeney's ranch—laughing and chatting, as they rode along side by side, Anne replying to every lark singing by the roadside in a ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Mansard roof here, no pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style, which now-a-day do duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic vedettes "making straight the way," for the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... surprised me greatly by telling me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that moved Oscar to try his hand at a similar feat by writing 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism.' (4) A chance meeting near the stage door of the Haymarket Theatre, at which our queer shyness of one another made our resolutely cordial and appreciative conversation so difficult that our final laugh and shake-hands was almost a reciprocal confession. (5) A really pleasant afternoon we spent together on catching one another in a place where our presence was an absurdity. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... more than ten years, and had a good part of the business of buying and shipping copra and selling supplies to the natives and a few whites. He lived in a shack back of his little store, with his native woman and four or five half-naked children. They told me queer stories about his madness for women. They said he would go out of his house and into the jungle near the trails and would lie in wait. If a woman he coveted passed, he would seize her, and even if her husband or consort was ahead of her, in the custom of these people, he would ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the parish school ... this woman, on the 15th of April, goes out with the child at ten o'clock in the morning and does not return until nightfall. And this has happened for years and in all weathers. You must admit that there is something queer about this date which I find on an old picture, which is inscribed on another, similar picture and which controls the annual movements of the ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Mr. Dodge contritely, "an' no wonder, with that there saddle. They're a very queer lot, them crazy chaps. There's one on 'em up there who calls himself Abraham Lincoln, an' then there's another who thinks he's a telegraph wire an' hes messages runnin' up an' down him continally. These is new potatoes, sir—early rosers. There's no end to their cussed kinks. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "Drunk! not 'im. Do you think he could imitate Mrs. Abel like that if he was drunk?" "Take them gels out o' the barn as quick as you can!" "If she don't stop shriekin' when you get 'er home, throw a bucket o' cold water over her. It's only 'isterics." "Well, I've seed a lot o' queer things in my time, and I've knowed Snarley to do some rum tricks, but I never seed nowt like that." "Oh dear, sir, I never felt so upset in all my life. It isn't right! Somebody ought to ha' stopped 'im. I wonder Mr. Abel didn't interfere." "That there poem o' Mrs. Abel's ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... his cousin's house a strange dwelling. Made of coarse grasses and reed stalks, it was round, like a big ball, with a doorway in one side. This queer building was fastened among the reeds a little distance above the ground. And it seemed to Rusty Wren that it must be a damp and unhealthful ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... selling quaint articles, smoky shanties where sailors were cooking their own queer messes, dealers in pipes, monkeys, parrots, ropes, sailcloth, fanciful curios, amongst which were mingled higgledy-piggledy old culverins, huge gilded lanterns, worn-out pulley-blocks, rusty flukeless ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... worked for him, and put it round his neck, and told him she had taken it with her to St. Laud, to give it him there beneath the cross, only he had gone away from her, so that she couldn't do so: and then Jacques begged pardon again and again in his own queer way; and then, having sat there by the mill-stream till the last red streak of sunlight was gone, they returned home to the village, and Annot told her father that Dame Rouel had been so very pressing, she had made them stay ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... had drug an old fence post onto the fire one night, and the post had only burned half up. The butt end of it, all charred and flaked, was still laying in the grass and weeds there. It hit me with a queer feeling—like it was only yesterday that fire had been lit there. And yet I knowed it had been a ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... delightful hospitality and mild climate, she was not averse to Charleston or New Orleans. But from the offer that came to teach Negroes—country Negroes, and little ones at that—she shrank, and, indeed, probably would have refused it out of hand had it not been for her queer brother, John. John Taylor, who had supported her through college, was interested in cotton. Having certain schemes in mind, he had been struck by the fact that the Smith School was in the midst ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... days," said Mark; "and of course I thought you knew. But Hetty, you are a jolly queer girl I can tell you, and I can't half understand you. Think of anyone standing two hours to be pierced through and through with cold, rather than drop a fellow's string ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... a batch of college students Queer lot. Ignorant? Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than another man would in a year. We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that came aboard with gold ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wife dropped with a weary gesture upon a chair near the fire. "Tammas, yo' know it's a queer thing awthegither! What are they coomin' ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... better know, Bob, that there's something queer about John Ford. They tell a lot of stories about him, but the one most common is that he's waiting till he gets one hundred thousand dollars before starting on a ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster |
